A couple of items submitted over the past few days that I wanted to clear out…

Tentacula was watching the video clip of a french music group called Air, and the clip was “radio number one”. He noticed what appeared to be BeOS in the video clip where you see them using a computer to sample their sounds. If anyone can verify this, or better yet, grab a screenshot, let us know!

A couple people wrote in about this, and Scott Brawner submitted the link to this article on electic.com about former 3dfx employees forming a new company. Hopefully they keep the same attitude of openness towards BeOS as 3dfx did.

Technix also wrote in to alert everyone to the fact that Pavel Cisler has left the OpenTracker team and handed control over to Dianne Hackborn. Click on More to read his email.

And a final note, PayPal seems to work very well for the BeForever TipJar. Daniel’s recieved over $150 in tips thus far. BeForever notes that on the 16th of the month, David Reid, porter of many important apps such as Apache and Gimp/GTK, will get his chance again, this time with PayPal. You can PayPal me tips for Daniel until the 15th (Friday), after which, until the end of the month, it will be a second chance to tip David. Remember, even a dollar or two adds up!
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Just had it pointed out to me that Wade Majors has stopped working on the BeZilla project, saying:

Some may not like to hear this, but I will no longer be working on Mozilla/BeOS. I will be happy to donate and transfer the mozillaforbeos.org domain to any user or group who wishes to do something with it. My reasons do have something to do with Be and the future of BeOS, and I am not going to try and justify those reasons here. You’ve all heard the stuff before. I wish Ham, Matt and the other moz devs still around luck.

He used to provide daily builds of BeZilla. I have also heard that Yannick Koehler has stopped working on BeZilla, though I don’t have confirmation on that. That still leaves several people on the BeZilla team, all of which are skilled and have been making progress… But they need more. BeZilla is a crucial app for BeOS, as it stops almost every complaint about a lack of browser support. Once it is up to speed with the other platforms, maintaining it won’t be as difficult. In fact, it should be relatively simple. But getting there will take a lot of help from lots of peeps. So if you can spare some time, and have “1337 skillz” involving BeOS coding, head over there and get involved.

This report on bebugs is set to version BeOS/Pro, but talks about R6. There is no reason to think this actually IS R6. First of all, the bug listed is very odd, in that it provides little to no detail, and is actually called “BeOS R6 beta bug
.” Secondly, it says “same happens on my friends computer” - which would imply either a strange beta group, or some serious NDA busting. Finally, there have been rumors circulating that the latest beta release of BONE, BeOS’s new networking stack, changes the version number of BeOS to read R6 in the about box. It could simply be confusion. With all that said, until Be comments on it within their bug system, there is no way to know for sure, so let the speculation begin. Odd’s are it’s a prank, but in either case, bet the headline made your day.

In related news, There has been much discussion about Be’s new OpenGL graphics layer, which is poised to be incredibly powerful, if it is ever released. NGE has been “sitting on a port of Unreal Tournament” until OpenGL is released, as stated in our forums, and the fact that Neverwinter Nights will require it. Follow that up with Soundplay 4.6 due for release with an OpenGL plugin, and one has to wonder if OpenGL is due soon. The developer of soundplay, Marco Nelissen, works for Be, Inc. and it’s hard to imagine he would prepare to release an application requiring OpenGL if OpenGL itself wasn’t due at any moment. What are your thoughts?

Update: This story is getting long, but Tim Koh of BeOutback pointed out something interesting:

1 Mozilla/6.0 (compatible; NetPositive 6.0; BeOS R6; BONE)

This line has been appearing in web logs around the net. (hint: search for netpositive in that page). Basically, a version of Net+ identifying itself as 6.0 on R6 logged onto that page on April 21st. Hmm.Update 2: Just to point out, the R6 bug has been labeled “Inappropriate” and the comment is “Funny” - So Be says its a prank.

The Register recently ran a “MS Calls Linux a Cancer” article, which obviously caused some replies. The Register has posted the replies as a new article. The third response is what is interesting, as refers to a BeOS related company in Portland Oregon, producing software for Windows. Read on.
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Dlazlo of i-BUG wrote in to remind the summer travellers to look up any BUGs in the areas they’ll be travelling to. He states:

With the summer travel season upon us here in the northern hemisphere, I’d like to encourage all traveling BeOS users to check for active BUGs and/or users in the area you will be traveling to. Find out if there’s any BUG meetings or events going on while you’re in the area. If nothing else, you could contact any known users where you’ll be visiting and have a visit. This not only ties the community closer together, it’s a wonderful way to help spread ideas, or maybe germinate a few.

Sounds like a good idea to me. If you are ever in the Denver area, look me up!

Well, it’s official. Lost Marble has dropped support for BeOS, after reluctant updates in the past. The 0confirmation came in a reply to BeNews inquiries about a 2.6 release for BeOS. They sounded upset about dropping BeOS, but realistic about their business, and it is hard to fault that sort of thinking. Like they said,

When we first created Moho for BeOS, we saw a great deal of potential for multimedia artists. Now however, we can’t imagine why an animator would choose this OS. It seems that anyone doing animation on BeOS must be putting animation as a second priority behind choosing an operating system.

I would love to say that we should all hold on, and that bone/opengl/r6 will be released soon, and we can get back up to speed. But at this point, Be has let things degrade so far that I am not sure it’s possible to fix it. Oh well. I hope they try, and even more so, I hope they succeed.